The women's fitness blog

The reality of our busy lives is that many people aren't able to get to the gym! With little time to regularly visit their local gym, where else can you train? If this is true for you, then you need to start thinking of ways to achieve your workout without a gym.

Gym-free fitness is easy once you stop thinking along traditional lines. Sure, you won't be able to join a class, or have a huge range of resistance machines available to you, but there are still plenty of options.

Probably the easiest way to start thinking about gym-free fitness is to consider walking or running. Taking a walk or a run three times a week for at least twenty minutes is a great base for overall conditioning - and research has shown that it doesn't even have to be all in one go - two half-hour walks are just as beneficial as a one hour walk. Try to incorporate it into your schedule - walking to and from work, or down to the local shops, etc. The key is the intensity - to work, it has to be a brisk walk, not a stroll.

In the home there are many options available - you could do some stair climbing, put on your favourite music and dance, use a keep fit video of some kind (aerobics, yoga, pilates etc), or even get some equipment and have your own mini health club.

A few dumbbells of the right weight will allow you to do a whole range of exercise for the whole body. Furthermore, there are several key exercise that require no more than your own weight - push-ups, dips on a chair, squats (one-legged squats are awesome), and of course, abdominal exercises.

The beauty of doing these at home is that you can do them whenever you want throughout the day, even in the evening in front of the TV. It's amazing how much quicker a set of abs crunches goes when you're engrossed in Desperate Housewives.

The key to working out at home is to be imaginative, and to be consistent. Once you start to look for ways to workout at home, it becomes easy.